I spent 10 minutes in summer vacation every day before the new school year began practicing saying my name. I prayed that teachers wouldn’t do name introductions. I prayed that I would be able to tell them my name.
I was never afraid of presentations because I feared to forget my text or because I was shy. I preferred written exams over alternative assessments.
I didn’t go to events because I knew it would require me to introduce myself and hence say my name.
I would never participate in reading in class. I would only raise my hand if I was sure my answer didn’t contain any “risk words”.
I pretended not to care when I heard whispers in class. I laughed when my relative told me she worried I had a stutter when I was younger. I didn’t tell her I had.
It hasn’t changed. I still dread introductions and prepare my answers in my head before raising my hand.
I still wish I wouldn’t have a stutter.
Development
I developed a stutter when I was only in kindergarten. Stuttering isn’t unusual, most children eventually “grow out” of it. But we quickly figured out that my stutter would not be temporary. I went to different speech therapies. Played games, shared stories, learned techniques and connected with other affected ones. I don’t do therapy anymore, but that’s mostly due to my schedule because I enjoyed it.
I don’t remember the earliest days in primary school. I knew that I talked differently, but my stutter never affected me much before middle school. In middle school, things changed a bit. People were crueler and I was more cautious, more anxious. I evaluated everything I said beforehand. I got better at avoiding certain words and situations.
Challenges
But the thing I feared the most, the situation I thought of when I lied in bed or stood in the bus has always been name introductions. I disliked my name, not because I didn’t think it was a pretty name, but because I couldn’t even once say it without having a blockade. It bothered me that I could easily say my name in my bedroom or on video, but never in crucial moments, never in class, never when meeting new people. People would always look at me, expectant and a bit annoyed. The whole room would go silent, and I could feel the gazes of my peers lingering on me as I had my mouth open for a seemingly endless time before somehow squeezing my name out. Sometimes, people misunderstood my name, sometimes they imitated me. I didn’t blame them. I would play the worst-case scenarios repeatedly in my head. I considered skipping school, events and even did embarrassing things in purpose to distract from my stutter.
Then, a teacher brought it up to me. I felt so insecure and transparent, but somehow relieved because I wouldn’t have to anxiously hope she wouldn’t call me up to read aloud in class. Therefore, I told some other teachers too which released some pressure of me. I never knew that my worry and fear didn’t only depend on peer-reaction, but also how the teachers dealt with it.
Acceptance and self-esteem
I “challenged” myself to be a bit more open about my stutter, step for step. It wasn’t easy for me; my stutter has always been an insecurity and a thing I was so embarrassed about. I started to inform people, mainly for educational and career purposes. But a journey takes time. It takes me courage every single time to speak up, to introduce myself, to participate in class. My nervousness and anxiousness haven’t disappeared over night. But I learned to be okay with myself. The first step for me was to accept my stutter.
Every time someone makes a comment, laughs or I feel the gazes on me, I still feel my heart sinking into my stomach. But I also always try to remember myself that people’s opinions don’t matter that much, even though I sometimes feel like it’s everything I care about. In a world full of judgement, the best I can do is to accept and not judge anyone because I never know their whole story.